To support an ever increasing demand for higher data rates, multiple-access networks are being deployed based on a variety of transmission techniques based on present standards and new standards including Long Term Evolution (LTE), LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), and new versions of the 802.11 and 802.16 family of wireless broadband standards. As illustrated in FIG. 1, a current mobile network 100 may be designed as a hierarchical system where there are many-to-one relationships between base stations 105, referred to as Evolved Node Bs (eNBs) and a Serving Gateway, Mobility Management Entity combination (S-GW/MME) 110. There is typically a one-to-one relationship between the S-GW/MME 110 and a Packet Data Network Gateway (P-GW) 115 to one or more external packet data networks (PDNs) 120.
Upon attachment, the system creates a state in all the elements that form the predefined user-plane path towards the P-GW 115 to ensure appropriate data forwarding. These virtual connections are defined as bearers, which are then used to apply appropriate Quality of Service (QoS) and security requirements to data flows among the network elements.
In an uplink from a user equipment device (UE) 125 to the base station 105, the mapping between a data flow and a bearer is done at the UE 125, and the external packet information, for example, an external destination IP address, is not used in routing decisions until the packets are decapsulated at the P-GW 115. The procedure is the same with downlink data flows from the base station 105 to the UE 125. Thus, even though the data flows may belong to different bearers, all data flows follow the same data path between the UE 125, the base station 105, the S-GW 110, and the P-GW 115 to and from the PDNs 120.
As least one problem arises from the fact that the hierarchical structure of the user plane and the virtual connections between the UE 125 and the P-GW 115 do not allow flexible data flow handling through the operator network 130. For instance, mobile data offloading techniques Local IP Access (LIPA) and Selected IP Traffic Offload (SIPTO) developed by 3GPP are based on a per PDN-connection basis. To handle these techniques, a UE 125 supports more than one PDN connection, at least one to the P-GW 115 and one to the S-GW 110. As a result, data flows between PDN connections or data flows that do not use the P-GW 115 or the S-GW 110 are not supported.
It would be advantageous to provide a data flow solution for present carrier networks, which may have rigid topologies based on bearers, and for future carrier networks, which may have arbitrary topologies for data path formation.